The new Pearl Harbor full text
THE NEW PEARL HARBOR Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin foreword by Richard Folk ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In writing this book, I received an enormous amount of help and support. The greatest help came, of course, from the authors upon whose work I drew. Without the work of Nafeez Ahmed and Paul Thompson, this book would not have even been begun, and without the books by Thierry Meyssan and Michel Chossudovsky, it would have been far less complete. And then there are all those reporters and researchers who have published relevant material in newspapers and magazines, on television shows, or on the Web, some of whom were labouring away long before Ahmed and Thompson began their work. To some of these reporters and researchers I am indebted only indirectly, through their influence on my primary sources; to others, I am directly indebted. I have acknowledged the work of at least many of them in the notes. The attempt to discover the truth about 9/11 and bring it to light has been a very cooperative enterprise, one involving hundreds of intensely dedicated, mostly unpaid, investigators. I have received help from many other people, including Tal Avitzur, John Cobb, Michael Dietrick, Hilal Elver, Richard Falk, Allison Jaqua, Gianluigi Gugliermetto, Colleen Kelly, John McMurtry, Pat Patterson, Rosemary Ruether, Pamela Thompson, and Sarah Wright. I wish also to thank all those who took time to express in writing their support for this book. I am indebted to Richard Falk for reasons that go far beyond his gracious willingness to write the Foreword. It was through his influence that I first began working on global political matters. He has been my main discussion partner about these matters. And it was through him that I became connected with Olive Branch Press of Interlink Publishing. I am especially grateful for this connection. The two people with whom I have worked at Olive Branch — Pamela Thompson and Michel Moushabeck — have not only been delightful collaborators. They have also manifested the kind of commitment to this book that authors usually only dream about. I am appreciative of my institution, the Claremont School of Theology, and especially its president, Philip Amerson, and its dean, Jack Fitzmier, for their unstinting support of academic freedom and their recognition of the need for the schools faculty to write about vital public issues of the day. Finally, I am, as usual, most indebted to the ongoing support from my wife, Ann Jaqua. FOREWORD David Ray Griffin has written an extraordinary book. If carefully read with even just a 30-percent open mind, it is almost certain to change the way we understand the workings of constitutional democracy in the United States at the highest levels of government. As such, this is a disturbing book, depicting a profound crisis of political legitimacy for the most powerful sovereign state in the history of the world — a country, furthermore, embarked on the first borderless war, with no markers of victory and defeat. If The New Pearl Harbor receives the sort of public and media attention that it abundantly deserves, it should alter the general public debate and exert a positive influence on how the future unfolds. It is rare, indeed, that a book has this potential to become a force of history. What makes The New Pearl Harbor so special is that it explores the most sensitive and controversial terrain — the broad landscape of official behavior in relation to the tragedy of 9/11 — in the best spirit of academic detachment, coupled with an exemplary display of the strongest scholarly virtue: a willingness to allow inquiry to follow the path of evidence and reason wherever it leads. And it leads here to explosive destinations, where severe doubts are raised about the integrity and worldview of our leadership in those parts of the government that exercise the greatest control over the behavior and destiny of the country, particularly in the area of national security, which includes a war overseas and the stifling of liberties at home. Griffin brilliantly makes an overwhelming argument for a comprehensive, unhampered, fully funded, and suitably prominent investigation of the entire story of how and why 9/11 happened, as well as why such an unprecedented breakdown of national security was not fully and immediately investigated as a matter of the most urgent national priority. There are so many gaping holes in the official accounts of 9/11 that no plausible coherent narrative remains, and until now we have been staggering forward as if the truth about these traumatic events no longer mattered. Griffin shows, with insight and a firm grasp of the many dimensions of the global security policy of the Bush Administration, that getting 9/11 right, even belatedly, matters desperately. The layer upon layer of unexplained facts, the multiple efforts by those in power to foreclose independent inquiry, and the evidence of a pre-9/11 blueprint by Bush insiders to do exactly what they are now doing on the basis of a 9/11 mandate is why the Griffin assessment does not even require a reader with a normally open mind. As suggested, 30-percent receptivity will do, which means that all but the most dogrnatically blinded adherents of the Bush presidency should be convinced by the basic argument of this book. It must be underscored that this book does not belong in the genre of "conspiracy theories," at least, as Griffin himself points out, in the pejorative sense in which that term is usually understood. It is a painstakingly scrupulous look at the evidence, with an accounting of the numerous discrepancies between the official account provided by the US government and the best information available. Of course, it is fair to wonder, if the conclusion toward which Griffins evidence points is correct, why this story-of-the-century has not been clearly told before in this country. Why have the media been asleep? Why has Congress been so passive about fulfilling its role as a watchdog branch of government, above all protective of the American people? Why have there been no resignations from on high by principled public servants followed by electrifying revelations? There have been questions raised here and there and allegations of official complicity made almost from the day of the attacks, especially in Europe, but as far as I know, no American until Griffin has had the patience, the fortitude, the courage, and the intelligence to put so many pieces together in a single coherent account. Part of the difficulty in achieving credibility in relation to issues this profoundly disturbing to public confidence in the basic legitimacy of state power is that the accusatory voices most often heard are strident and irresponsible, making them easily dismissed as "paranoid" or "outrageous" without further consideration of whether the concerns raised warrant investigation. In contrast, Griffins approach is calm and his argument consistently well-reasoned, making his analysis undeniably compelling. But there are troubling forces at work that block our access to the truth about 9/11. Ever since 9/11 the mainstream media have worked hand-in-glove with the government in orchestrating a mood of patriotic fervour making any expressions of doubts about the official leadership of the country tantamount to disloyalty. Media personalities, such as , who questioned, even casually, the official narrative were given pink slips, sidelined, and silenced, sending a chilling message of intimidation to anyone tempted to voice dissident opinions. Waving the American flag became a substitute for critical and independent thought, and slogans such as "United We Stand" were used as blankets to smother whatever critical impulses existed. This thought-stopping equation of patriotism with unquestioning acceptance of the present administrations policies has played into the hands of those presidential advisors who have seen 9/11 not as a national tragedy but—in the phrase used by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during a TV interview with Jim Lehrer on the second anniversary of the attacks—"a blessing in disguise." As the spell cast by patrioteering has begun to wear off, there is another related dynamic at work to keep us from the truth— what psychiatrists describe as "denial." The unpleasant realities of the Iraq occupation make it difficult for most Americans to acknowledge that the whole undertaking, including the death and maiming of young Americans, was based on a willful distortion of reality by the elected leadership of the country—namely, the suggestion that was responsible for 9/11. This unpleasantness is magnified many times over if what is at stake is the possibility that the terrible events of 9/11 were from the outset, or before, obscured by deliberately woven networks of falsehoods. Part of the impulse to deny is a desperate wish to avoid coming face-to-face with the gruesome realities that are embedded in the power structure of government that controls our lives. Griffin's book is a much-needed antidote for the collective denial that has paralyzed the conscience and consciousness of the nation during these past few years. At the very least, it should give rise to a debate that is late, but far better late than never. Long ago Thomas Jefferson warned that the "price of liberty is eternal vigilance." There is no excuse at this stage of American development for a posture of political innocence, including an unquestioning acceptance of the good faith of our government. After all, there has been a long history of manipulated public beliefs, especially in matters of war and peace. Historians are in increasing agreement that the facts were manipulated (1) in the explosion of the USS Maine to justify the start of the Spanish-American War (1898), (2) with respect to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to justify the previously unpopular entry into World War II. (3) in the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, used by the White House to justify the dramatic extension of the Vietnam War to North Vietnam, and, most recently, (4) to portray Iraq as harboring a menacing arsenal of weaponry of mass destruction, in order to justify recourse to war in defiance of international law and the United Nations. The official explanations of such historic events as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the assassination of President Kennedy have also not stood up to scrutiny by objective scholars. In these respects, the breaking of trust between government and citizenry in the United States has deep historical roots, and is not at all merely a partisan indictment of the current leadership associated with the right wing of the Republican Party. But it does pose for all of us a fundamental, haunting question. Why should the official account of 9/11 be treated as sacrosanct and accepted at face value, especially as it is the rationale for some of the most dangerous undertakings in the whole history of the world? As Griffin shows, it is not necessary to go along with every suspicious inference in order to conclude that the official account of 9/11 is thoroughly unconvincing. His approach is based on the cumulative impact of the many soft spots in what is officially claimed to have happened, soft spots that relate to advance notice and several indications of actions facilitating the prospects of attack, to the peculiar gaps between the portrayal of the attack by the media and government and independent evidence of what actually occurred, and to the unwillingness of the government to cooperate with what meager efforts at inquiry have been mounted. Any part of this story is enough to vindicate Griffin's basic contention that this country and the world deserve a comprehensive, credible, and immediate accounting of the how and why of that fateful day. Such a step would exhibit today the enduring wisdom of Ben Franklins celebrated response when asked what the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia had accomplished: "A republic, if you keep it." —Richard Falk INTRODUCTION (lead) The attacks of 9/11 have often been compared with the attacks on . Investigative reporter James Bamford, for example, has written about President Bush's behavior "in the middle of a modern-day Pearl Harbor."1 CBS News reported that the president himself, before going to bed on 9/11, wrote in his diary: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."2 This comparison has often been made for the sake of arguing that the American response to 9/11 should be similar to the American response to Pearl Harbor. Just after the presidents address to the nation on September 11, 2001, posted an online article in which he said: "The government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended — with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it."3 An editorial in Time magazine that appeared right after the attacks urged: Some of the comparisons have pointed out that the attacks of 9/11 did indeed evoke a response, calling for the use of US military power, similar to that produced by Pearl Harbor. Quoting a prediction made in 2000 by soon-to-be top officials in the Bush administration that the changes they desired would be difficult unless "a new Pearl Harbor" occurred,5 Australian journalist John Pilger wrote: "The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the new Pearl Harbor.'"6 A member of the US Army's Institute for Strategic Studies reported that after 9/11, "Public support for military action is at levels that parallel the public reaction after the attack at Pearl Harbor."7 These comparisons of 9/11 with Pearl Harbor do not seem unjustified. The events of 9/11, virtually everyone agrees, were the most important events of recent times — for both America and the rest of the world. The attacks of that day have provided the basis for a significant restriction on civil liberties in the United States (just as Pearl Harbor led to restrictions on the civil liberties of Japanese Americans).8 Those attacks have also been the basis of a worldwide "war on terror" led by the United States, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq being the two major episodes thus far. The Bush administrations "war on terror" is, moreover, widely perceived as a pretext for a more aggressive imperialism. Phyllis Bennis, for example, says that 9/11 has resulted in "foreign policy imposed on the rest of the world through an unchallenged law of empire."9 Of course, a few historians have been pointing out for some time that American leaders have long desired an empire covering the whole world.10 But most critics of US foreign policy believe that the imperialism of the Bush II administration, especially since 9/11, has been much more explicit, far-reaching, and arrogant.11 Richard Falk has, in fact, referred to it as "the global domination project."12 Although there was an outpouring of good will toward America after 9/11 and a widespread willingness to accede to its claim that the attacks gave it a mandate to wage a worldwide war on terrorism, this good will was quickly exhausted. American foreign policy is now criticized around the world more widely and severely than ever before, even more so than during the . The American answer to all criticism, however, is 9/11. When Europeans criticized the Bush administrations intention to go to war against Iraq, for example, several US opinion-makers supportive of the war explained the difference in perception by saying that the Europeans had not suffered the attacks of 9/11. The Failure of the Press Given the role of 9/11 in leading to this much more explicit and aggressive imperialism, some observers have suggested that historians will come to look back on it as the real beginning of the 21st century.13 Nevertheless, in spite of the virtually universal agreement that 9/11 has been of such transcendent importance, there has been little public scrutiny of this event itself. On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the New York Times wrote: "One year later, the public knows less about the circumstances of 2,801 deaths at the foot of Manhattan in broad daylight than people in 1912 knew within weeks about the Titanic."14 That was the case in part because the Bush administration, arguing that an investigation would be a distraction from the needed "war on terrorism," resisted the call for a special commission. But the publics lack of information about 9/11 was also due in large part to the fact that the Times and the rest of the mainline press had not authorized investigative reports, through which the publics lack of knowledge might have been overcome. Another year later, furthermore, the situation remained virtually the same. On September 11, 2003, a writer for the Philadelphia Daily News asked: "why after 730 days do we know so little about what really happened that day?"15 The American press has, in particular, provided no in-depth investigation of whether the official account of what happened fits with the available evidence and is otherwise plausible.16 Many newspaper and television stories have, to be sure, raised several disturbing questions about the official account, showing that there are elements of it that do not seem to make sense or that seem to contradict certain facts. But the press has not confronted government officials with these apparent implausibilities and contradictions. The mass media have not, moreover, provided the public with any comprehensive overviews that lay out all the disturbing questions of which they are aware. There have been many very important stories by a number of journalists, including the internationally known, award-winning journalist Gregory Palast and Canada's award-winning Barrie Zwicker (see notes >16 and >18). But such stories, if even seen, have been largely forgotten by the collective consciousness, as they have remained individual products of brilliant and courageous reporting, having thus far not been allowed to add up to anything significant. Finally, although strong criticisms of the official account have been presented by many otherwise credible individuals, the mass media have not exposed the public to their views. Criticisms of the official account are, to be sure, inflammatory, for to reject the official account is to imply that US leaders, including the president, have constructed a massive lie. And if they did construct a false account, they would have done so, most people would assume, in order to cover up their own complicity. And that is indeed the conclusion of most critics of the official account. That would certainly be an inflammatory charge. But how can we claim to have a free press — a Fourth Estate — if it fails to investigate serious charges made against a sitting president on the grounds that they are too inflammatory? The charges against in the were inflammatory. The charges against in the Iran-Contra affair were inflammatory. The various charges brought against President Clinton were inflammatory. In all these cases, however, the press reported the issues (albeit in the first two cases rather belatedly). It is precisely in such situations that we most need an independent press. But the press has failed to do its job with regard to 9/11 even though if the official account of 9/11 were found to be false, the consequences would be enormous — much more so than with any of those prior scandals. The official account of 9/11 has been used as the justification for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have resulted in the deaths not only of thousands of combatants but also of far more innocent civilians than were killed on 9/11. This account has been used as the justification for dozens of other operations around the world, most of which are largely unknown to the American people. It has been used to justify the USA PATRIOT Act, through which the civil liberties of Americans have been curtailed. And it has been used to justify the indefinite incarceration of countless people in Guantanamo and elsewhere. And yet the press has been less aggressive in questioning President Bush about 9/11 than it was in questioning President Clinton about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a very trivial matter by comparison. The failure of the American media in this regard has been admitted by some insiders. For example, Rena Golden, executive vice-president and general manager of CNN International, was quoted as saying in August of 2002 that the American press had censored itself on both 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. "Anyone who claims the US media didn't censor itself," Golden added, "is kidding you. And this isn't just a CNN issue — every journalist who was in any way involved in 9/11 is partly responsible."17 As to why this has been the case, CBS anchorman Dan Rather has said: Rather's confession surely explains at least part of the press's reticence to question the official account, especially since journalists perceived as unpatriotic are in danger of being fired. One of the chief critics of the official account, Thierry Meyssan, suggests that Americans have viewed any criticism of the official account to be not only unpatriotic but even sacrilegious. On September 12, Meyssan reminds us, President Bush announced his intention to lead "a monumental struggle of Good versus Evil."19 On September 13, he declared that the next day would be a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks. And on September 14, the president himself, surrounded by Billy Graham, a cardinal, a rabbi, and an imam as well as four previous presidents and many members of Congress, delivered the sermon. In this sermon, he said: Through this unprecedented event, in which the president of the United States issued a declaration of war from a cathedral, Meyssan observes, "the American government consecrated...its version of events. From then on, any questioning of the official truth would be seen as sacrilege."21 9/II and the Left If raising disturbing questions about the official account would be seen as both unpatriotic and sacrilegious, it is not surprising that, as both Rena Golden and Dan Rather admit, the mainline press in America has not raised these questions. It is also not surprising that right-wing and even middle-of-the-road commentators on political affairs have not raised serious questions about the official account. It is not even surprising that some of them — including Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of social and political ethics — have declared that the accusation of official complicity is beyond the pale of reasonable debate, so that any arguments on its behalf can simply be ignored. Elshtain, calling the suggestion that American officials, including the president, were complicit in the attacks "preposterous," adds: "This sort of inflammatory madness exists outside the boundary of political debate" and therefore does not even "deserve a hearing." 22 From this perspective, it is not necessary to examine the evidence put forward by critics of the official account, even though some of these critics are fellow intellectuals teaching in neighboring universities — such as two well-respected Canadian academics, economist Michel Chossudovsky and social philosopher John McMurtry. 23 Although Elshtain points out that "if we get our descriptions of events wrong, our analyses and our ethics will be wrong too,"24 she evidently thinks it unnecessary to consider the possibility that the official description about the events of 9/11 might be wrong. Although this attitude is unfortunate, especially when it is expressed within the intellectual community, it is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is that America's leftist critics of US policy, who are seldom worried about being called either unpatriotic or sacrilegious, have for the most part not explored, at least in public discourse, the possibility of official complicity.25 These critics have, to be sure, been extremely critical of the way in which the Bush administration has responded to 9/11. They have, in particular, pointed out that this administration has used 9/11 as an excuse to enact policies and carry out operations that have little if any relation to either punishing the perpetrators of the attacks or preventing further such attacks in the future. They have even pointed out that most of these policies and operations were already on the agenda of the Bush administration before the attacks, so that 9/11 was not the cause but merely the pretext for enacting them. These critics also know that the United States has many times in the past fabricated an "incident" as a pretext for going to war — most notoriously for the wars against Mexico, Cuba, and Vietnam.26 But few of these critics have seriously discussed, at least in public, whether this might also be the case with 9/11, even though a demonstration of this fact, if it were true, would surely be the most effective way to undermine policies of the Bush administration to which they are so strongly opposed. Abjuring a "conspiracy theory, they accept, at least implicidy, a "coincidence theory," according to which the attacks of 9/11 were, from the administrations point of view, simply a godsend, which just happened to allow it to carry out its agenda. An example is provided by Rahul Mahajan, a brilliant and outspoken critic of US imperialism. He analyzes the themes of US imperialism since 9/11 in the light of the document alluded to earlier that mentioned the need for a "new Pearl Harbor," this being Rebuilding America's Defenses, which was prepared by the Project for the New American Century. Three of the major themes of this document, Mahajan emphasizes, are the need to place more military bases around the world from which power can be projected, the need to bring about "regime change" in countries unfriendly to American interests, and the need for greatly increased military spending, especially for "missile defense" — explicidy understood not as deterrence but as "a prerequisite for maintaining American preeminence" by preventing other countries from deterring us. Mahajan then points out that "the 9/11 attacks were a natural opportunity to jack up the military budget" and that the other ideas in this document, in conjunction with the well-known preoccupation of Bush and Cheney with oil, provided the major themes of their post-9/11 imperial strategy. Mahajan also notes that this document said that the desired transformation of the military would probably be politically impossible "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor." And Mahajan even adds that "within a year they authors of this document had their Pearl Harbor and the chance to turn their imperial fantasies into reality." After pointing out all of this, however, Mahajan opts for coincidence over conspiracy, saying: "Conspiracy theorists will no doubt rejoice, but this, like so many events in the history of US foreign policy, is simply another example of Pasteur's famous axiom that 'Fortune favors the prepared mind."27 Mahajan may, of course, be right. But he gives us no reason to think so. He, in particular, reveals no sign of having studied the evidence provided by those who have argued that the attacks could have been successful only through the complicity of the US government. How This Book Came About Whether or not it is true that Mahajan dismissed the evidence without examination, it was certainly true of me. Until the spring of 2003, I had not looked at any of the evidence. I was vaguely aware that mere were people, at least on the Internet, who were offering evidence against the official account of 9/11 and were suggesting a revisionist account, according to which US officials were complicit. But I did not take the time to try to find their websites. I had been studying the history of American expansionism and imperialism quite intensely since 9/11, so I knew that the US government had fabricated "incidents" as an excuse to go to war several times before. Nevertheless, although the thought did cross my mind that 9/11 might likewise have been arranged, I did not take this possibility seriously. It seemed to me simply beyond belief that the Bush administration — even the Bush administration — would do such a heinous thing. I assumed that those who were claiming otherwise must be "conspiracy theorists" in the derogatory sense in which this term is usually employed — which means, roughly, "crackpots." I knew that if they were right, this would be very important. But I was so confident that they must be wrong — that their writings would consist merely of loony theories based on wild inferences from dubious evidence — that I had no motivation to invest time and energy in tracking these writings down. I fully sympathize, therefore, with the fact that most people have not examined the evidence. Life is short and the list of conspiracy theories is long, and we all must exercise judgment about which things are worth our investment of time. I had assumed that conspiracy theories about 9/11 were below the threshold of possible credibility. But then a fellow professor sent me an e-mail message that provided some of the relevant websites. Knowing her to be a sensible person, I looked up some of the material on the Internet, especially a massive timeline entitled "Was 9/11 Allowed to Happen?" by an independent researcher named Paul Thompson.>28 I was surprised, even amazed, to see — even though Thompson limits himself strictly to mainline sources >29 — how much evidence he had found that points to the conclusion that the Bush administration did indeed intentionally allow the attacks of 9/11 to happen. At about the same time, I happened to read Gore Vidal's Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, which pointed me to the most extensive book on 9/11, The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001, by Nafeez Ahmed, an independent researcher in England. >30 Ahmed's book provides an organized, extensively documented argument that directly challenges the accepted wisdom about 9/11, which is that it resulted from a "breakdown" within and among our intelligence agencies. >31 Ahmed, like Thompson, suggests that the attacks must have resulted from complicity in high places, not merely from incompetence in lower places. Ahmed's and Thompsons material taken together, I saw, provided a strong prima facie case for this contention, certainly strong enough to merit an extensive investigation by the American press, the US Congress, >32 and the 9/11 Independent Commission, >33 all of which had thus far operated on the assumption that 9/11 resultedfrom intelligence and communication failures. I also saw, however, that the work of Thompson and Ahmed was not likely to reach very many of the American people. Thompson's timelines, while extremely helpful for researchers with the time and patience to work through them, were not easily readable by ordinary citizens, partly because they were available only online and partly because, as the name "timeline" indicates, the evidence was arranged chronologically rather than topically. >34 And, although Ahmed's evidence was in a book and was arranged topically, the book was quite long and contained far more material than needed to support the basic argument. Much of this additional material was, furthermore, in the book's early chapters, so that one had to work through several chapters before getting to the evidence that directly contradicted the official account. If the important information provided by Ahmed and Thompson were to reach many people, including busy members of Congress and the press, something else would be needed. I decided, accordingly, to write a magazine article that would summarize the main evidence and also point interested readers to the studies of Thompson, Ahmed, and others presenting a revisionist account of 9/11. But that article grew into a book-length manuscript, because I soon found that, even though I tried to limit myself to the most important evidence, it was impossible within the confines of an article to present an intelligible account that would do justice to the evidence that has been provided by these researchers. After I began writing, furthermore, I learned of the work of the previously mentioned French researcher, Thierry Meyssan, in particular his hypothesis that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon could not have been a Boeing 757, which is what Flight 77 was, but must have been a guided missile. When I first learned of this revisionist hypothesis, I — probably like most people now reading my report of it — assumed it was completely absurd. Surely the difference between a gigantic 757 and a relatively small missile is so great that if the Pentagon had been hit merely by a missile, Pentagon officials could not have convinced anyone that it was a 757! Did we not learn from press reports that the hole created in the side of the Pentagon was 200 feet wide and five stories high? Had we not learned from one of the passengers on Flight 77 — TV commentator Barbara Olson — that it was headed toward Washington? And had not eyewitnesses identified it? Virtually everyone, including most critics of the official account of 9/11, accepted the idea that the Pentagon was hit by Flight 77. How could they all be wrong? Nevertheless, after I got Meyssan's books and read them for myself, I saw that his case as absurd as it had seemed at first glance, is quite strong. I eventually became convinced, in fact, that it is with regard to the strike on the Pentagon that — assuming Meyssan's descriptions of the evidence to be accurate the official account seems most obviously false. Or at least that it is tied for first place for this honor. The fact that the official account of the strike on the Pentagon is still widely accepted provides an especially good example, therefore, of the fact that most of the public has simply not been exposed to the relevant evidence. The present book seeks to bring together all the major strands of this evidence. No previous book has done this. Ahmed's book, while easily the most comprehensive, does not have much of the evidence contained in Thompson's timelines and in Meyssan's books. And Meyssan's books while containing important evidence not available elsewhere, do not have most of the information provided by Ahmed and Thompson. The same is true of the other most important book in English on the subject, Michel Chossudovsky's War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11. As its subtitle indicates, it focuses on the background to 9/11, dealing with 9/11 itself only briefly. In the present book, I have brought together what seems to me the most important evidence found in these >35 and some other sources. >36 The Book's Contents As I see it, five major types of evidence have been raised against the official account. The first type, which involves inconsistencies and implausibilities in the official account of what happened on 9/11 itself, is discussed in the four chapters of Part I. The four other types of evidence are discussed in Part II. All this evidence is organized in terms of a number of "disturbing questions," >37 which are disturbing precisely because they suggest that official account is, as the tide of the English translation of Meyssan's first book on the subject calls it, a "big lie." >38 They are also disturbing beause they suggest the revisionist thesis that the attacks of 9/11, which President Bush has rightly called evil, were carried out with the complicity or so officials of the Bush administration itself. In the Conclusion, I ask whether the best explanation of the evidence presented in the prior chapters is indeed, as the revisionists suggest, official complicity in the attacks of 9/11. I then discuss the implications for the kind of investigation now needed. Possible Meanings of "Official Complicity" Although the revisionist writings on which this book draws charge official complicity in the attacks of 911, one thing missing in them is any careful discussion of just what they mean by "official complicity." There are at least eight possible views of what official complicity in the attacks of 9/11 might mean. In order that readers can decide, as they examine the evidence, which kind of official complicity, if any, the evidence supports, I list these eight possible views here in ascending order of seriousness — meaning the seriousness of the charge against the Bush administration that the view would imply. 1. Construction of a False Acount: One possible view, is that although US officials played no role in facilitating the attacks and did not even expect them, they constructed a false account of what really happened — whether to protect National Security, to cover up potentially embarrassing facts, to exploit the attacks to enact their agenda, or for some other reason. Athough this would be the least serious charge, it would be sufficiently serious for impeachment — especiallv if the president had lied about 9/11 for personal gain or to advance some pre-established agenda, such as attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. 2. Something Expected by Intelligence Agencies: A second possible view is that although they had no specific information about the attacks in advance, some US intelligence agencies — such as the FBI, the CIA, and some intelligence agencies of the US military — expected some sort of attacks to occur. Although they played no role in planning the attacks, they perhaps played a role in facilitating them in the sense of deliberately not taking steps to prevent them. Then, having done this without White House knowledge, they persuaded the White House after 9/11 not only to cover up their guilt, by constructing a false account, but also to carry out the agenda for which the attacks were intended to gain support. 3. Specific Events Expected by Intelligence Agencies: A third possible view is that intelligence agencies (but not the White House) had specific information about the timing and the targets of the attacks. 4. Intelligence Agencies Involved in Planning: A fourth possible view is that intelligence agencies (but not the White House) actively participated planning the attacks. 5. Pentagon Involved in Planning: A fifth possible view is that the Pentagon (but not the White House) actively participated in planning the attacks 6. Something Expected by White House: A sixth possible view is that although the White House had no specific knowledge of the attacks in advance, it expected some sort of attacks to occur and was a party to facilitating them, at least in the sense of not ordering that they be prevented. >39 This view allows for the possibility that the White House might have been shocked by the amount of death and destruction caused by the attacks that were actually carried out. 7. Specific Advance Knowledge by White House: A seventh possible view is that the White House had specific foreknowledge of the targets and the timing of the attacks. 8. White House Involved in Planning: An eighth possible view is that the White House was a party to planning the attacks. As these possibilities show, a charge that 9/11 involved "complicity" or "conspiracy" on the part of US officials can be understood in many ways, several of which do not involve active involvement in the planning, and most of which do not involve presidential involvement in this planning. One reason these distinctions are important is that they show that discussion of the idea of official complicity — whether such complicity is being charged or rejected — needs to be more nuanced than is often the case. For example, the charge that Jean Bethke Elshtain rejects as "preposterous" is the "charge that American officials, up to and including the president of the United States, engineered the attacks to bolster their popularity." >40 In so wording it, she not only equates the charge of official complicity with the eighth of the possible views listed above, which is the strongest charge, but also ties this charge to the imputation of a specific motive to the American officials allegedly involved — that of bolstering their own popularity. Having dismissed that highly specific charge as preposterous, she evidently assumes that the whole idea of official complicity has been laid to rest. But there are many other possibilities. For example, Michael Parenti, one of the few well-known leftist thinkers to have suggested some form of official complicity, points out, like Mahajan, that the attacks were so convenient that they have provoked suspicion: "The September terrorist attacks created such a serviceable pretext for reactionism at home and imperialist expansion abroad as to leave many people suspecting that the US government itself had a hand in the event." Parenti at first seems to dismiss this suspicion as completely as Mahajan, saying: "I find it hard to believe that the White House or the CIA actively participated in a conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, killing such large numbers of Americans in order to create a casus belli against Afghanistan." >41 Parenti, however, does not stop there. Citing an article by Patrick Martin, who refers to some facts suggesting official complicity, Parenti endorses Martins conclusion — that although the US government did not plan the details of the attacks or anticipate that thousands of people would be killed, it "expected something to happen and looked the other way." >42 Parenti thereby illustrates the second or, more likely, the sixth of the possible views. In any case, I have found, as I have said, that the revisionists have made a strong prima facie case for at least some version of the charge of official complicity. To say that they have made a convincing case would require a judgment that the evidence that they cite is reliable. And, although I have repeated only evidence that seemed credible to me, I have not independendy verified the accuracy of this evidence. As the reader will see, this evidence is so extensive and of such a nature that no individual — especially no individual with very limited time and resources — could check out its accuracy. It is for this reason that I claim only that these revisionists have presented a strong prima facie case for official complicity, strong enough to merit investigations by those who do have the necessary resources to carry them out — the press and the US Congress. If a significant portion of the evidence summarized here holds up, the conclusion that the attacks of 9/11 succeeded because of official complicity would become virtually inescapable. I should perhaps emphasize that it is not necessary for all of the evidence to stand up, given the nature of the argument. Some arguments are, as we say, "only as strong as the weakest link." These are deductive arguments, in which each step in the argument depends on the truth of the previous step. If a single premise is found to be false, the argument fails. However, the argument for official complicity in 9/11 is a cumulative argument. This kind of argument is a general argument consisting of several particular arguments that are independent from each other. As such, each particular argument provides support for all the others. Rather than being like a chain, a cumulative argument is more like a cable composed of many strands. Each strand strengthens the cable. But if there are many strands, the cable can still hold a lot of weight even if some of them unravel. As the reader will see, there are many strands in the argument for official complicity in 9/11 summarized in this book. If the purported evidence on which some of these are based turns out to be unreliable, that would not necessarily undermine the overall argument. This cumulative argument would then simply be supported by fewer strands. And some of the strands are such that, if the evidence on which they are based is confirmed, the case could be supported by one or two of them. >43 "Conspiracy Theories" Before turning to the evidence, however, we should pause to consider the fact, to which allusion has been made, that it seems widely assumed that any such case can be rejected a priori by pointing out that it is a "conspiracy theory." Indeed, it almost seems to be a requirement or admission into public discourse to announce that one rejects conspiracy theories. What is the logic behind this thinking? It cannot be that we literally reject the very idea that conspiracies occur. We all accept conspiracy theories of all sorts. We accept a conspiracy theory whenever we believe that two or more people have conspired in secret to achieve some goal, such as to rob a bank, defraud customers, or fix prices, we would be more honest, therefore, if we followed the precedent of Michael Moore, who has said: "Now, I'm not into conspiracy theories, except the ones that are true." >44 To refine this point slightly, we can say that we accept all those conspiracy theories that we believe to be true, while we reject all those that we believe to be false. We cannot, therefore, divide people into those who accept conspiracy theories and those who reject them. The division between people on this issue involves simply the question of wich conspiracy theories they accept and which ones they reject. >45 To apply this analysis to the attacks of 9/11: It is false to suggest that those who allege that the attacks occurred because of official complicity are "conspiracy theorists" while those who accept the official account are not. People differ on this issue merely in terms of which conspiracy theory they hold to be true, or at least most probable. According to the official account, the attacks of 9/11 occurred because of a conspiracy among Muslims, with Osama bin Laden being the chief conspirator. Revisionists reject that theory, at least as a sufficient account of what happened, maintaining that the attacks cannot be satisfactorily explained without postulating conspiracy by officials of the US government, at least in allowing the attacks to succeed. The choice, accordingly, is simply between (some version of) the received conspiracy theory and (some version of) the revisionist conspiracy theory. Which of these competing theories we accept depends, or at least should depend, on which one we believe to be better supported by the relevant facts. Those who hold the revisionist theory have become convinced that there is considerable evidence that not only suggests the falsity of the received conspiracy theory, which we are calling "the official account," but also points to the truth of the revisionist theory. I turn now to that evidence. FOOTNOTES for the Introduction Frequently Cited Works Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001. Joshua Tree, Calif.: Tree of Life Publications, 2002. Chossudovsky, Michel. War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11. Canada: Global Outlook, 2002. Meyssan, Thierry. 9/11: The Big Lie. London: Carnot, 2002 (translation of L'Effioyable imposture Les Editions Carnot, 2002). — Pentagate. London: Carnot Publishing, 2002 (translation of Le Pentagate Les Editions Carnot, 2002). Thompson, Paul. "September 11: Minute-by-Minute," Center for Cooperative Research. After the first citation in a chapter, this timeline will be cited simply as Thompson, followed by the time. For example: Thompson (8:55 AM) or Thompson, 8:55 AM, depending how he marks it on his website. — "Was 9/11 Allowed to Happen? The Complete Timeline," Center for Cooperative Research. After the first citation in a chapter, this timeline will be cited simply as "Timeline," followed by the date under which the information is found. Both timelines are available on the website for the Center for Cooperative Research (www.cooperativeresearch.org). Introduction 1James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), 633. 2Washington Post, January 27, 2002. 3Henry Kissinger, "Destroy the Network," Washington Post, September 11, 2001 (washingtonpost.com), quoted in Thierry Meyssan,9/11: The Big Lie (London: Carnot, 2002), 65. 4Lance Morrow, "The Case for Rage and Retribution," Time, September 11, 2001. 5The Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (www.newamericancentury.org), 51. This document will be discussed further. 6John Pilger, New Statesman, December 12, 2002. 7Leonard Wong, Institute of Strategic Studies, Defeating Terrorism: Strategic Issues Analysis, "Maintaining Public Support for Military Operations" (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/public.pdf), quoted in 9/11: The Big Lie, 127. 8On these restrictions and their consequences, see Nancy Chang, Silencing Political Dissent: How Post-September 11 Anti- Terrorism Measures Threaten Our Civil Liberties, Foreword by Howard Zinn (New York: Seven Stories, 2002). 9Phyllis Bennis, Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis, Foreword by Noam Chomsky (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2003). 10See Richard W. Van Alstyne, The Rising America. Empire (1960; New York: Norton, 1974); Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898 (1963; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Thomas J. McCormick, China Market: America's Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967)- Lloyd C. Gardner, Walter F. LaFeber, and Thomas J. McCormick, Creation of the American Empire (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973); Laurence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy( New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977); Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right (New York:. Hill and Wang, 1995). 11"More than any single policy," says Bennis, "the biggest cause of international anger against the United States is the arrogance with which US power is exercised" (Before and After, xv). 12"Resisting the Global Domination Project: An Interview with Prof. Richard Falk," Frontline, 20/8 (April 12-25, 2003). 13For example, Rahul Mahajan, The New Crusade: American's War on Terrorism (New York: Monthly Review, 2002), 7. 14New York Times, September 11, 2002. 15William Bunch, "Why Don't We Have Answers to These 9/11 Questions?" Philadelphia Daily News online posting, September 11, 2003. 16The media in several other countries have, by contrast, presented investigative reports. In Canada, for example, journalist Barrie Zwicker presented a two-part examination, entitled "The Great Deception: What Really Happened on September 11th," on January 21 and 28, 2002 (MediaFile, Vision TV Insight www.visiontv.ca). In Germany, the public discussion has been such that a poll in July of 2003 revealed that 20 percent of the German population believed that "the US government ordered the attacks itself" (Ian Johnson, "Conspiracy Theories about September 11 Get Hearing in Germany," Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2003, A1). 17Press Gazette, August 15, 2002. 18Rather's remarks, made in a interview on Greg Palasts BBC television show Newsnight, were quoted in a story in the Guardian, May 17, 2002. This statement is quoted in Greg Palast, "See No Evil: What Bush Didn't (Want to) Know about 9/11," which is contained in Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth about Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters (Plume, 2003), which is the Revised American Edition of his 2002 book (with a different subtitle). This essay was also posted March 1, 2003, on TomPaine.com. 19"Remarks by the President in Photo Opportunity with the National Security Team" (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001 /09/20010912-4.html). 20"Presidents Remarks at National Day of Prayer and Remembrance" (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001 /09/20010914-2.html). 21The material in notes 19-21 is quoted in 9111: The Big Lie, 77, 76-77, 79. 22Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 2-3. 23See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11 (Canada: Global Outlook, 2002), and John McMurtry, Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2002), Preface. 24Elshtain, 9. 25To some extent, this fact reflects a matter of principle — a concern that devoting attention to possible conspiracies is diversionary. Some of the reasons for this wariness are valid. One concern is that a focus on exposing conspiratorial crimes of present office-holders may reflect the naive asssumption that if only we can replace those individuals with better ones, things will be fine. Underlying that worry is the concern that a focus on conspirators can divert attention from the more important issue of the structural problems in the national and global order that need to be overcome. But although those dangers must be guarded against, we should also avoid a too strong dichotomy between structural and conspiratorial analysis. For one thing, although structural analysis is essential for any deep understanding of social processes, structures as such, being abstractions, do not enact themselves. They are influential only insofar as they are embodied in agents — both individual and institutional — who act in terms of them. These agents, furthermore, are not fully determined by the dominant values of their societies. They have degrees of freedom, which they can use to act in ways that are more or less wise, more or less just, and more or less legal. When political leaders enact policies that are egregiously unjust, dangerous, and even illegal, it is important to replace them with leaders who are at least somewhat better. Finally, and most important, the exposure of a conspiracy may, rather than diverting attention from a society's problematic structures, turn attention to them. For example, if it became evident that our national political leaders caused or at least allowed the attacks of 9/11 and that they did so partly because they had deeply embodied certain values pervasive of our society, we might finally decide that a society-wide reorientation is in order. 26This practice is, of course, not unique to America. It is generally agreed, for example, mat the "Mukden incident," in which an explosion destroyed part of the Japanese railway in Manchuria, was engineered by Japanese army officers "as an excuse to conquer Manchuria" (Walter LaFeber, The Clash: US-Japanese Relations Throughout History York: Norton, 1997, 166). 27Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond (New York: Seven Stories, 2003), 59, 50, 48. 28Paul Thompson's main timeline, entitled "Was 9/11 Allowed to Happen? The Complete Timeline," lists possibly relevant events extending over many years and fills some 200 single-spaced pages. 29This is one respect in which Thompson sees himself as differing from some other researchers, such as Michael Ruppert, mentioned in note 36, below. 30Gore Vidal, Dreaming War. Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (New York: Thunder's Mouth/Nation Books, 2002); Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001 (Joshua Tree Calif, Tree of Life Publications, 2002). Vidal, one prominent member of the American left who has rejected the official account of 9-11, endorses Ahmed's book -- calling it "the best, most balanced report, thus far" (l4) -- and summarizes some of its argument. 31See Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 (Washington: Regnery 2002), by Bill Gertz, a journalist for the Washington Times. A more recent version of this thesis is provided in Gerald Posner, WhyAmerica Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 (New York: Random House, 2003) Posner attributes the failure to breakdowns (xi), blunders (xii, 169), missed opportunities (xii, 146), investigative mix-ups (34), mistakes (150, 155, 169), incompetence and bad judgment (142, 167), stifling bureaucracy (173), and especially the failure of agencies to share information with each other (35, 44-47, 59, 178). "The failure to have prevented 9/11," asserts Posner, "was a systemic one" (xii). The task before us, therefore, is simply to fix the system. As Walter Russell Mead says (without criticism) in a book review, "the message of Why America, Slept is on balance a hopeful one. Incompetence in our security establishment is something we can address" ("The Tragedy of National Complacency," New York Times, October 29, 2003). 32A Joint Inquiry into the attacks was carried out in 2002 by the intelligence committees of the US Senate and House of Representatives. Although this Joint Inquiry had completed its final report by December of 2002, the Bush administration long refused to allow it to be released. Only a very brief summary of this final report was made public (it can be read at http://intelligence.senate.gov/press.htm under December 11, 2002). Finally, late in July 2003, the final report itself was released. Although discussions in the press described the report as surprisingly critical, the criticism was limited to charges of incompetence. Significant portions of the final report were, to be sure, deleted in the name of national security, but I see no reason to believe that these deletions — which reportedly involved foreign countries, especially Saudi Arabia — contained any accusations of complicity in 9/11 by US officials. Possible reasons for the inadequacy of the Joint Inquiry's report are discussed in Chapter 10. 33Although its official name is the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, it is informally known as the 9/11 Independent Commission. President Bush had long opposed the creation of any such commission, claiming that it would take resources away from the war on terrorism. But embarrassing revelations from the Joint Inquiry (see previous note) reportedly left him little choice (Newsweek, September 22, 2002). In November of 2002, Bush signed a bill establishing the commission (the website of which is www.9-11commision.gov). Problems in relation to this commission are discussed in Chapter 10. 34In the meantime, Thompson has been developing articles in which the material is organized in terms of a large number of topics, which continues to grow. He also has a growing number of articles in which he discusses various dimensions of the controversies about 9/11. His website is therefore becoming increasingly easy to use. 35Implicit in this statement is the fact that I do not endorse all arguments in the main sources I employ. Meyssan, for example, has some theories that I find implausible and others that seem at least insufficiently supported by evidence. 36One failing of this book is that I have usually made no effort to discern, with regard to various stories and facts reported, which investigator or researcher was first responsible for reporting them. This means that I have surely in many cases failed to give proper credit. One example involves the fact that I cite Paul Thompson's timelines abundantly while citing Michael Ruppert's website, From the Wilderness (www.fromthewilderness.com or www.copvcia.com), relatively rarely. And yet Ruppert was one of the earliest major critics of the official account of 9/11. In fact, in Thompson's statement of "credits and sources," he says: "This timeline started when I saw the excellent timeline at the From the Wilderness website and began adding to it. I found that timeline to be a great resource, but it wasn't as comprehensive as I wanted. My version has since grown into something of a monster, but the inspiration still lies with From the Wilderness" (www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/index.html). Ruppert, furthermore, is simply one example of several researchers, such as Jared Israel, who were publishing information challenging the official account almost immediately after 9/11. To try to sort all of this out in order to assign proper credit, however, would detract from the task of getting the challenge to the official account into the public discussion. Most researchers, as far as I can tell, seem more interested in this than in receiving credit. The question of proper credit, in any case, is one that would appropriately be answered by some historian of this movement if it is successful. 37In suggesting that there are many disturbing questions that have thus far not been answered,I am to some extent reflecting the attitude of the organizations formed by families of the victims of the attacks, one of which is, in fact, called "Unanswered Questions" (see www.UnansweredQuestions.org). Other organizations with websites include Familiy Steering Committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission (www.911Independentcommission.org), Voices of September 11th (www.voicesofsept11.org), 9-11 Citizens Watch (www.911Citizenswatch.org), and the 9/11 Visibility Project (www.septembereleventh.org). 38This book, cited in previous notes, is a translation of Meyssan's L'Effroyable imposture (Paris Les Editions Carnot, 2002). 39This view of the White House could be combined with any of the previous five views insofar as those views deal only with the involvement of other US agencies. This sixth view, therefore, has five possible versions. The same is true of the seventh and eighth views. 40Elshtain, 2-3. 41Michael Parenti, The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond (San Francisco: City Lights, 2002), 69, 70. 42Parenti, 70-71, citing Patrick Martin, "US Planned War in Afghanistan Long Before September 11," World Socialist Conference, November 20, 2001 (www.wsws.org/artides/2001/nov2001/afghn20.html); the quoted words, which summarize Martins position, are Parenti's. 43I emphasize this point because some polemicists, when confronted by a book whose conclusion they do not like, seek to undermine this conclusion by focusing on the few points that they believe can be most easily discredited. That tactic, assuming that good evidence is really presented against those points, is valid with regard to a deductive argument. In relation to a cumulative argument, however, it is tactic useful only to those concerned with something other than truth. 44Michael Moore, Dude, Where's My Country? (New York: Warner Books, 2003), 2. 45To refine the point a little more: There are some conspiracy theories that, although we may not be convinced of their truth, we find at least plausible, so we are willing to entertain the possibility that they might be true. We are open, accordingly, to reading and hearing evidence intended to support them. There are other conspiracy theories, by contrast, that we find completely implausible, so we tend to suspect the intelligence or sanity of people who believe them or who even entertain the possibility of their truth. Whatever facts they offer as evidence we reject out of hand, holding that, even if we cannot explain these facts, the true explanation cannot be the one they are offering. But the question of what we find completely implausible — 'beyond the pale' — is seldom determined simply by a dispassionate consideration of empirical evidence. Plausibility is largely a matter of one's general worldview. We are also influenced to some degree by wishful-and-fearful thinking, in which we accept some ideas partly because we hope thay are true and reject other ideas because we would find the thought that they are true too frightening. At least sometimes, however, we are able, in spite of our prejudgments, to revise our prior ideas in light of new evidence. Most revisionists about 9/11, in presenting their evidence, seem to be counting on this possibility. Part One The Events of 9/11 PART TWO THE LARGER CONTEXT CONCLUSION References Taken from http://nosedive.org/backup/griffin.htm